Personal commentary - Graduation

This has been a stressful week.  An unusually high number of people have asked me how much time until graduation.  I answer, "seven weeks."  It rolls off my tongue like it's no big deal, but in my head, a deluge of to-do's flows over me, threatening to drown me.  I have so much to do.  Not only do i have all of these final projects for my classes, but I have to plan my graduation party (when you're older, your mother doesn't do it all for you anymore, you have to do some of it yourself), get invites out, finish up my correspondence classes which I am, of course, behind on, so that's overwhelming.  Then there is all of the pain I've been in - my feet, my legs, my right shoulder, my migraines.  The migraines are just a nasty sinus infection.  Well praise the Lord because if there were one more thing on my list of things, I would probably jump.
But then I think about graduating.  I sit back and I picture myself walking with my classmates, all in a row. Watching everyone's names get called, watching them shake the president's hand.  I think that when my name is called, it will be exactly the same in my head.  My name will be called, and I will come out of myself and watch as I shake the president's hand, tears welling up, smiling for the camera, flipping my tassel, listening to my family hoot and holler.
Two months from now, I will go to my class reunion.  Many of the people who were so cool in highschool are married with hot husbands, finishing up their graduate degrees - Libby's going into dentistry, Emily just got placed for her residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  One of my best friend's is a hot-shot bankruptcy lawyer in Minneapolis, and her husband is the same.  They're saving up to pay cash for a house.  Who needs a mortgage?  My friend Kari has a baby and a great husband and is about to build a house on top of a hill overlooking Rapid City.  Carrie and Sonja, two of my closest highschool friends, are married with beautiful homes.  Carrie likes to rock-climb, Sonja likes to scrapbook.
I don't like to do anything that doesn't involve school or work.  My favorite tv shows are backed up for 18 episodes on my DVR.  I'm sitting here, waiting for my dishes to soak because it's been so long since I've had time to do them, that they're getting kind of crusty.  I have like 65 pounds to lose and I just knew I would have it off by my class reunion.  Well, that is in less than 4 months, and if you do the math, it wouldn't even be possible.  And that would require me to make weight loss a priority.  This takes time.  Time I don't have because when I'm not working hard at school or driving to and from Vermillion, I'm working full time overnights.
So I will go, chubby and single, newly diploma'd, pain in my feet as I mingle with others, scars all over my chest and back and in my lungs from the cancer that took so many years from me.  I will smile and have fun.  I will giggle with the newly married girls that had it made in highschool and still have it made now when they announce that they're six weeks along.  I will dance to the bad 90's music that made its mark on my years of highschool.  I will laugh heartily with my friends.  I will probably drink a little more than I should considering I must be careful with my overworked liver.
Ten years.  What has happened to those years.  So much.  Without them, I would be a shell of my current self, so I don't regret a single minute - even if my most recent catheter scar will distract everyone at the party from the cute dress I painstakingly picked out.  Dammit.